The pain of constantly gripping a bloody, sweaty, slippery prior art boning knife for even just the first hours only of employment at cutting meat from bones has been a pain great enough to cause some would-be professional boners to quit the first day.
This well-known problem of the art has existed for decades. For decades, since 1954, the two manufacturers of boning knives have left the exterior dimensions of their marketed products unchanged, as I have been informed. The exterior dimensions of their marketed products have been largely unchanged despite the pain workers have experienced during these decades.
Often professional boners who have "stuck it out" and stayed with this work for years have been forced to quit this good-paying employment and go "looking for work". The reason: They have contracted a handicap in their hands called "tendinitis".
Tendinitis can be a professionally crippling to a boner as a broken leg to a basketball player.
Workers at boning have needed to be saved from this dread prospect of permanent loss of boning employment. But the prior art knife manufacturers have for decades left the exterior dimensions of their marketed products unimproved, to the best of my knowledge.
It is not claimed that the changes in handle shape proposed herein are guaranteed by years of experience to eliminate the problem of tendinitis. But it is proven by experience with the boning knife disclosed herein that much greater hand comfort during boning definitely results. Since such hand pain is known to be from tendon strain, it is logical to expect years of use to result in a marked lessening of crippling tendinitis itself.
It has been discovered that this prior art condition need not be so. It has been discovered that a boning knife can be changed. It can be provided with a hand-anchor-ridge at its rearward end of a size for engaging the backside of the "heel-bone" of the hand to the rear of the small finger.
It has been discovered that with a hand-anchor-ridge at the rear of the handle, hand-anchor-ridge for protrusion beyond the handle of about 0.160 inch, that the average person in hand pain so severe that they feed they must quit from using other conventional boning knives of the present and of the past 30 years can often continue to work if they are changed over from using a conventional prior art boning knife to the knife of this invention.
An objective of the present invention is to provide a hand-anchor-ridge protruding laterally from the rearward end of the handle so that the "bone" behind the small finger of the operator's hand engages the hand-anchor-ridge, making it possible for the operator to hold onto the bloody, sweaty, slippery handle adequately and with less hand-strain.
In the prior art, there has been no grip-ridge at the rearward end of the handle for the purpose of making gripping of the boning knife easier.
For the different purpose of providing extra strength and rigidity at the rearward end of a boning knife handle, there have been thicker areas on boning knife handles at the rearward end. Such a thickening is disclosed as item 45 in U.S. Pat. No. 4,324,034, issued Apr. 13, 1982, to Timothy J. McCullough, titled: HAND PIECE FOR MEAT TRIMMING KNIFE. However, there is no grip-assisting purpose stated for the thickening at item 45 and the dimensions at the thickening provide a protrusion laterally from the side of the handle that is tiny, although suitable for the different purpose stated in the patent. The dimension of such a protrusion, if calculated from the drawings of the patent in terms of its proportions, appears to be less than one-third of the amount of the protrusion proposed for the new grip-ridge hereof.
The boning knives being marketed at this time that have the thickening for strength purposes are found to have a protrusion from the side of the handle of a dimension of about 0.047 inch. The grip-ridge proposed herein has a preferred protrusion dimension of 0.160 inch, over 340% greater in accordance with the new purpose of assisting grip. This indicates that the thickening bead 45 of the McCullough patent, when looked at from the standpoint of assisting grip of the handle, would be a mere accidental disclosure.
In the prior art the thickening or bead could have been accomplished with a protrusion on the inner side of the hollow handle, and it appears that the reason it appears to be on the outside is for a lesser conflict with the drive cable assembly, which latter preferably would engage a surface on the inner side of a handle which would be curved outwardly and rearwardly from a position of being flush with or continuous with the inner surface of the hollow handle. However the hand-anchor-ridge hereof must protrude from the outside of the handle, rather than the inside, in order to serve its different purpose of helping to prevent tendinitis.
During many decades there has been a long-felt need for improvement felt in the aching hands of the boning knife operators during their long hours of work in gripping slippery knives, and also felt by anyone to whom they told their plight, all of whom would be acquainted with the way that boning knives have been constructed in the prior art.
Heretofore the rearward portion of boning knife handles have been smooth and of substantially non-porous, slippery thermoplastic or aluminum material. They have not utilized with knurling at all in this very important location, where the handle is at maximum width and so hand-pressure on the handle at this rear area is great. Therefore, it turns out to be an ideal place for knurling, even though this discovery was overlooked for decades while knurling at the narrow forward neck of the hand-gripped area has been before the eyes of this trade for decades. At the narrow forward neck usually only one finger touches, making the knurling there substantially useless compared to the new rear knurling position thereof.
In the past, boning handles had only one lubricating hole to the right of the center of the handle. In this hole is mounted an upwardly protruding lubrication housing and the right handed operator's thumb is then free to be placed against the left side of the handle top which is the natural position for it. But for the left handed operator the lubrication housing is in the way of his natural thumb position which would then be on the right of center pressing against the handle top. This has handicapped or stopped left handed would-be boners for decades without a solution to this problem. It is an object of this invention to provide two threaded openings in the handle, one on the left for the left-handed operators, and one on the right for right-handed operators, so that the lubrication housing can be disposed out of the left handed operator's thumb position.
Another objective hereof is to provide the knife handle with a smaller diameter at parts gripped by the operator. It has been discovered that this not only relieves tendinitis for people who have smaller hands, but also relieves pain for those who have the largest hands among the operators.
Heretofore, at the rearward portion of handle, there was no knurl, and it is an objective hereof to add knurl for making gripping easier.
In the past, there has only been a light knurling at a forward part of the handle. It is an object of this invention to increase the depth of the knurling at this forward part for much easier gripping.
Unscientific tests conducted by laymen have attempted to show that such knurling provides relief of tendon strain and hence in the long-run helps to prevent tendinitis.